The “dry ice” approach to
serious poetry— I-it employed over I-thou— forms an interesting chiasmus with
what I call Inter-Dialogism. When you want to jump over the hurdle of ordinary
consciousness into the consciousness of another, however briefly, and if the
Other in question is set at a natural distance from you, as can happen in many
contexts, the result can be insight or a mystified sense of helplessness. Think
how this works in terms of worldly power— militaries, judicial systems,
governments— and how individuals who fall under the aegis of these conglomerate
interests are forced to make their points and gather their information. If you
meet another personage, with the insignias of worldly power on them, one way or
another, your attempt to make the Inter-Dialogic leap may or may not be
hampered by timidity, reserve, prudence, intimidation, coercion, or a sense of
being toppled by protocols. Often, if the Inter-Dialogic leap is to be made and
the insight gleaned (leading to whatever further action the situation or
context demands), it must happen quickly, once the powerful party has somehow
been shocked into revealing themselves. Worldly power, as relates to the
individual consciousness of those who bear it, can create a brain white-washed
by its own armature of complexities and protocols, which make it so that, when
both partners in a conversation have vested worldly interests, Inter-Dialogism
is beleaguered by the dry ice of no intimacy whatsoever, and often, no brain
symmetry (interchange of nations). Everything remains resolutely impersonal,
even as, as everything created by the human brain, political armature must show
cracks and strains, and those skilled at noticing those cracks and strains can
make an Inter-Dialogic leap towards figuring out another consciousness. This
all manifests in Apparition Poem 1345, from Apparition Poems:
Two hedgerows with a
little path
between— to walk in the
path like
some do, as if no other
viable route
exists, to make Gods of
hedgerows
that make your life tiny,
is a sin of
some significance in a
world where
hedgerows can be
approached from
any side— I said this to
a man who
bore seeds to an open
space, and he
nodded to someone else
and whistled
an old waltz to himself
in annoyance.
The situation appears
severe— the protagonist of the poem is spinning out an allegory for someone we
assume to be a government or military functionary. The purport of the allegory
is the idea that when the human race plans to move forward, forcing individuals
to worship forces that degrade, abase, and trivialize their lives, this usually, and
needlessly, disrupts human progress. As to why the Inter-Dialogic needs of the
protagonist swerved him towards employing this allegory— the functionary’s reaction
would have to reveal, one way or another, at least a part of his brains, and
thus make the situation more comprehensible to the protagonist. Thus, the whole
Inter-Dialogic interchange has to happen without there being any personal
emotion involved at all. Inter-Dialogic reactions dry iced this way, without
any personal emotion, when represented in text, are a taste some may have more
than others, just as the first, dry iced set of Apparition Poems may be
preferable to some over the more personal Cheltenham Elegies. Here, what is set
forth is a situation in which the functionary’s reaction— annoyance— leaves in
enough ambiguity that the reader must decide for him or herself if a real
Inter-Dialogic leap has been made or if the protagonist misjudged his
adversary. He has attempted to initiate a battle of mystification— a sense that
boundaries are being crossed, so that who is mystifying who becomes an open
question. This reality is, as I said, political more than personal, just as the
Elegies have politics built into them only on secondary levels. Why dry ice in
serious poetry is interesting as an aesthetic effect is that most sensitive
temperaments understand that the dry ice effect has its own aesthetic grandeur,
just as Shelley’s snow and ice storms in Mont Blanc are strangely, eerily
gorgeous. As for 1345, the poem ends with the situation seemingly
power-blocked; allegory told, allegory rejected; and yet we know that in
politics, responses can germinate over long periods of time. Thus, the battle
of mystification works for the reader too, who will be unable to predict either
the precise context of this battle (no precise playing field, like Cheltenham) or how it may turn out in the end. The entire
edifice is on ice, thus subject to decay, deterioration, and erosion.
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